My S&S diary - investing from February 2026

LL_USS

Wednesday 18 March:

A long hour class again today but the sun is shining, Emerging Market is coming back up (almost out of the red now for both Dodl long term pot and T212 playing/ learning pot - both at more or less £36.50/ share). ishare Japan index - I could have waited a bit longer to give time to let it get back to higher level, but no "should have", "could have" - I made that decision based on some reasons, together with selling Brent Oil, which still stay put today.

Coming to 3 weeks since the ME conflict started, thanks to spreading the purchases to the down-time, all area indexes are looking fine now, except for Fidelity Index Japan P Acc, which seems to be just a delay in updating the new price.

Forgot to say I did not realise MSFT paid dividends on 12 March, almost £10 (minus a tiny bit of FX charge). MSFT was the first stock I bought - still no coming back yet but constantly a green on Dodl for me even when things got tough :-)

LL_USS

Three hours on a row of talking for a class, finishing at 6 and first thing I did on the way out is to check what has happened today in the stock market 😏. Soooooooooooo much movement in a day I can see for Emerging markets. I touched green early morning, as a screenshot above, and now back to about £100 in red as the market closed. My Japan index in Dodl will still in big red as the price is updated on Dodl then.

Perfect example of how oil moves in an opposite direction with Emerging Markets and Japan, the two areas heavily impacted by the close of Hormuz Strait. I did not have Vanguard Japan, just iShares Japan Hedged - with the latter one being hedged against the negative of the foreign currency (JPY vs GBP), it's still slightly up from yesterday.

A thought crossed my mind: I could have waited longer to sell iShares Japan and oil to get a bit more money then I had to shut down that thought. It could have gone another way round, keeping these two and they came down and i could again be in red and got more days of worries. Funny a specific amount of money, especially when it's a loss, have an much amplified impact on you, perhaps more for a new person in the game. £20 in red all of the sudden becomes "failure" or even a "collapse of a whole belief", making it feel so much worse that it really is. I already gained a bit of money from selling the oil, and I still think "well, I could have made a bit more" - a bit of a regret because I shut down that feeling convincing myself I have done as planned. It's getting better in terms of emotions in the process.

Aylesbury_Duck

This thread is interesting, but I can't escape the comparison with trying to determine what's happening with the climate by measuring rainfall, temperature, sunshine and wind speeds daily for a few weeks.

seacaitch

The way I read it is that the OP's intention is to experience for themself the difficulties, behavioural pitfalls, and the futility, ultimately, of what they're currently doing - illustrating via this experiment things that they've previously been told about but which they wish to test out themself Sometimes, there's nothing like direct personal experience of something to teach us strong lessons…

Micro-monitoring and responding to markets as closely as they are currently is rarely durably rewarding for anyone over the long term. Far better to operate at arm's length, automate, and get on with your dayjob and your life. I think the OP recognises this but wishes to just give the alternative a test drive for a while, to experience it, and to then move on. Hopefully! 😉

LL_USS

@seacaitch wondeful summary and better than my own words, thank you 😍. When I "move on" I'll personally tell you 😊.

Thursday 19/03/2026.

Still relieved after an unrelated achievement yesterday - I managed to book for a returned flight to Asia for a conference in the summer, which does not stopover in the Middle East or Istanbul, and without having to pay twice the price as the budget I applied for a month ago.

I still can't help, still checking what's going on in the stock market today 🤔. Emerging Markets is precarious like our weather, up and down so much in just one day (yesterday). I had enough of the "learning", putting a limit sell for £36.55 just to cover the cost, to get the money back but it only went up for slightly under that mark yesterday - so I am still stuck with this panic purchase of EM for a while in my play pot T212. EM and other area indexes still kept in the long-term Dodl pot - all red. I am calmer now seeing the red but perhaps I need to prepare for even a worse scenario (all red except Vanguard Pacific ex-Japan, which has just gone into green, not sure what's next tomorrow).

A few of my friends still hold lots of gold, which has been speculated so much that it has lost its hedging function as safe haven for investors. They are waiting this out. I sold my ishares physical gold when it was 74.4, though I had wanted to hold it long-term for hedging, but I was scared to see this speculation effect. I did think "oh no, I should have waited longer" when it reached over 75, then even 76.9, but now thinking again, it was good to get out of something too speculative (and to be honest I don't know enough about- just stick to very large basket funds).

Among my group chat we are talking about an observation that when physical prices spike, the companies that actually own the ground and the pipes win: locally produced oil, refineries. Am wondering when the market returns, whether I should still have some percentage of the investment portfolio for these (energy, metal, defense - or dare I say, crypto). As a side note, we are also talking about the challenging job market. A finance internship opportunity opens at a friend's company - 6,000 applications. In the group, 2 couples, and one more person lost their jobs in the City (banking, fintech, tech) all within a month. Some people have gone into overdrafts the first time in their lives. I am telling myself to be even more cautious with money!

Working from home today- the sun is shining so I will do a bit of gardening during a break. Also followed another dance video for my morning exercise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh1SNj7F7C0

Volatility is the name of game today with Gold too. I am still sitting tight. If gold does not come back down to a level of end of last year then no point buying for hedging reason. Anything I don't keep for long-term I will just sell to get cash back for the main investment pot.

LL_USS

Friday 20 March 2026

Super quick update today (I did not even have time to do morning exercises as much as usual - will need to be at work early for a VIVA by a PhD student of mine, and yes still worried about my boy at uni in the South during the outbreak of meningitus in Kent).

Waking up - checking Dodl long term pot (bad new habit, I know - till things settle, I'd be bored looking at this regularly just to see some earnings or losses just on paper anyway). The area indexes are now updated on the app - another dip, as I thought. About -3% on the investment so far.

My group chat is still talking about gold - it's going up again, some said "I should have bought some yesterday" and some did buy to reduce the average price paid. I still stick to my plan - No gold until it seems to work again as a hedging tool, not speculative as now.

Oh by the way, last night as my investment group on Facebook had an incident. One of us by mistake tagged Meta AI in as she asked a question. Oh my gosh it jumped in and TALKED EXACTLY IN THE SAME TONE THAT WE ARE USING IN THE GROUP. It was freaking scary. Another one of us said Meta AI is still at the back seeing all these discussions on Meta platforms, it's always there and it comes out when we ask it a question. So we asked it a couple of questions further, and it WAS JUST LIKE ONE OF US TALKING. Not fun. Really concerning where AI is going without more stringent regulations.

Quick notes now I need to dash…..

LL_USS

Saturday 21 March 2026 - Quick note after parkrun.

More experienced investors in my group chat said last night they had to try not to laugh, seeing I note price movements everyday after the conflict started in the Middle East - they said it was cute 😍 and some of them had innocent moments like those as they were learning at the start. Oh well. I also keep notes of what orders I put in each day, and what time, what time they changed from "pending" to "in progress" and then when they went through 😆.

We talked about some people only buying more when the stocks they want become "very cheap". It's difficult to know what is "cheap" though- it's all relative. On 2 March I thought I had some good prices after the first move of the market following Trump bombing Teheran. Then it was "much" cheaper a few days later. I told my group how chuffed I was buying cheap. Then oops the whole market came down "double/ tripple much" further now - I was joking to my friends that my jaw dropped to the floor seeing the downward movements and I still have not been able to close the mouth back yet 😅. And I hope not, but I am prepared mentally in case this may not even be a considerable change as yet - there could be more beyond the impact of the conflict in the Middle East.

We also talked about what Dollar Average Costing means - easier if the regular investments come out from monthly saving, so we tend to have a certain date in the month, certain amount from your income. But for those who have a lump sum to invest (about 40K in my case 6 weeks ago), it's not as easy to decide how frequent and how much to drip in each time. My plan was £1k each x 4 area indexes (later, 5 areas) every week. Then 3 weeks after my start, the geo-political environment changed, I deviated from the plan for 3 next weeks and bought more than the plan. Now 6 weeks on, just under 25K already committed to area indexes (and 5K to MSFT from the beginning), as of today, -4% down on the investments. I've heard that +-3% on the pot as ongoing is fine.

Some trading did happen - on both my Dodl pot and T212 a mere £250 crystalised and added - totally not worth it given all the work and emotional rides, I only did it to know what it is like and I was lucky I did not lose real money.

Happy Weekend however the market is doing 😍. Forgot to say my PhD student passed her VIVA with minor correction, becoming the newest doctor of the school! Lots to smile about.

masonic

Global equities are down perhaps 6% in sterling terms from their all-time high. It is worth doing a sense check if they are "cheap" once they've fallen 20%, 30%,… 50%. It is not just a reducing value on a screen, but a change in sentiment. The fall needs to be large enough to convince a critical mass that the prospects for the future have fundamentally changed. You also need to be prepared to see those numbers on your screen and hold out. They will happen, sooner or later.

LL_USS

@masonic noted - thank you very much for sharing. Your note copied and pasted on my "thinking pad" to look at and dwell further in the coming months.

From a nervous learner :-)

LL_USS

24 March 2026

Hibernating waiting for the winter outside to pass ;-)